Growing our paper

By By Thomas Tingle
Record Managing Editor
We are a couple of days away from completing the editorial content that will go in our special and largest publication of the year called "Progress."
This is the second year that the Madison County Record has published a Progress section in the paper. This year, the theme for Progress is United We Stand. There will be three sections in Progress – America's Faith, America's Enterprise and America's People.
Each section will feature stories and photos about churches and religious activities in town, unique local businesses here in Madison and Madison County and unique people in our community.
During the past three weeks, we've had a deadline to complete one section each week. Progress will be inserted into the Wednesday, May 29, edition of the paper and I think our readers will be pleased with what they see.
Once we are finished with Progress, we've decided to refocus our efforts in obtaining news and information about the things that are going on in our neighboring communities. Since the name of the paper is Madison County Record, it needs to have information about the things that are going on in Madison County.
We will start our focus on the Monrovia, Harvest and Toney areas and we are looking for residents in these respective areas to help us out in letting us know what's going on.
In our May 11 edition of the paper, we had a write-up called the "Talk of Toney." It was filled with a lot of interesting news and events going on in the area. When you think about it, there are as many – if not more – people living north of the city of Madison than in the city of Madison itself. I live in Harvest and there is non-stop construction of homes all around me.
I visited a small rural business up in Toney that will be featured in Progress and the owner of the business said there's always something going on around here – even if it's a big family barbecue at the Miller's home or the fact that Miss Effie Jones grew several large tomatoes in her garden this year.
That's the kind of news we want to put in our paper. We want to know what's going on with the people who call these areas home. In Athens at the paper I used to work at, we had an elderly lady who wrote a column in the lifestyles section that was filled with the latest tidbits about who did what and when in the community. You name it, we put it in the paper – as long as it didn't offend anyone.
I'll keep you informed on this latest venture with the paper and if you are interested in telling me who I can ask to help us out and keep us up-to-date on the "latest" news and information, give me a call here at the paper at 772-6677. I definitely want to hear from you.